RESEARCH ARTICLE
Low HDL Cholesterol, Smoking and IL-13 R130Q Polymorphism are Associated with Myocardial Infarction in Greek Cypriot Males. A Pilot Study
Stavroulla Xenophontos1, Marilena Hadjivassiliou1, Alexandros Karagrigoriou2, Nafsika Demetriou1, George Miltiadous3, Ioannis Marcou4, Moses Elisaf3, Dimitri P Mikhailidis5, Marios A Cariolou*, 1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2008Volume: 2
First Page: 52
Last Page: 59
Publisher ID: TOCMJ-2-52
DOI: 10.2174/1874192400802010052
Article History:
Received Date: 24/6/2008Revision Received Date: 2/7/2008
Acceptance Date: 4/7/2008
Electronic publication date: 22/7/2008
Collection year: 2008

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/), which permits unrestrictive use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
This study was carried out in Greek Cypriot males to identify risk factors that predispose to myocardial infarction (MI). Genetic and lipid risk factors were investigated for the first time in a Greek Cypriot male case-control study.Contrary to other studies, mean low density lipoprotein cholesterol did not differ between cases and controls. High density lipoprotein cholesterol on the other hand, although within normal range in cases and controls, was significantly higher in the control population. In agreement with many other studies, smoking was significantly more prevalent in cases compared with controls. In pooled cases and controls, smokers had a significantly lower HDL-C level compared with non-smokers. The frequency of the IL-13 R130Q homozygotes for the mutation (QQ), as well as the mutant allele were significantly higher in cases compared with controls. The IL-13 R130Q variant, or another locus, linked to it, may increase the risk of MI.